To nobody’s surprise if you’ve ever studied the history of monarchies or other authoritarian regimes…power nearly always aligns with power and guns. Army, police, papacy, large corporations, right-wing politicians…they almost always find it irresistible to ally themselves with whatever dictator or king or coup leader comes along with lots of violence and guns.

The rhino ivory trade is largely based on folklore and superstition because some in Vietnam believe that ivory is strong medicine. And its illegality has driven up the price making it a status symbol of wealth. The elephant ivory goes largely to the Chinese market for carvings, again a status symbol.

Along with the oil guy who first told Trump how important it was to some oil magnates that the ANWR be opened to oil drilling? After all the environmentalists got their way for forty years, so it’s time to pay obeisance to greed for a change.

Twice in as many years the Republican Party leaders have slammed into a heap of garbage. Last year it was the Trump Campaign with its condensed load of bullshit, racism, claptrap and misogyny. They leaned down, picked it up on loaded all that garbage onto their campaign train.

Today the Republican leaders’ train actually hit a real truck with real garbage. One dead, collateral damage, as the self-selected finest minds of our generation were en route to a high level conflab to figure how they can continue to feed garbage to the world and the American public. Having their own variety of bullshit, racism, claptrap and misogyny, it is unlikely the Republicans needed to scavenge anything from the truck that was cut in half. The toll: in the truck one dead, two injured, a scene like the American body politic, bleeding from deep cuts, some fatal to agencies once deemed worthwhile.